


Every Man For Himself

by sunstarunicorn



Series: Magical Flashpoint Side Stories [30]
Category: Flashpoint (TV)
Genre: Birthday Party, F/M, Gen, Laser Tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25070614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunstarunicorn/pseuds/sunstarunicorn
Summary: It’s an unwritten rule in law enforcement to cover your partner’s six.  So what is Team One to make of their Sergeant’s call for a free-for-all?  Must be time for Lance’s birthday party…at the local Laser Quest.
Relationships: Ed Lane/Sophie Lane, Kevin "Wordy" Wordsworth/Shelley Wordsworth
Series: Magical Flashpoint Side Stories [30]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/576850
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Every Man For Himself

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the Magical Flashpoint Side Story series. It follows "Proving Grounds – Flashpoint Edition" and comes before "Phoenix Aligned".
> 
> Although all original characters belong to me, I do not own _Flashpoint_ , _Harry Potter_ , _Narnia_ , or _Merlin_.

Ed was the first to reach the briefing room, just after the shift had started. His eyebrows arched at the envelope waiting for him; a quick glance informed him that everyone save his boss had a similar white envelope in front of their chairs. The team leader sat down, poking at the envelope warily.

“It’s not going to bite, Ed,” Greg Parker remarked with a muted chuckle.

“What’s not going to bite?” Jules asked, entering the briefing room before Ed could respond. The team leader turned in his chair to see her response to the mystery envelopes. “Is there a party soon?”

“Party?” Spike, naturally, had popped up as soon as the magic word left Jules’ mouth. “What party? Are we invited?”

Ed, satisfied there was no hidden prank, opened up his envelope and turned it enough for three tickets to fall out as the final members of the team entered the briefing room and angled for their usual seats. The sniper grabbed them and turned one enough to read it. “Laser Quest.”

“Sweet!” Spike crowed, snatching his own envelope up and nearly ripping it in his enthusiasm. “What’s Saturday?”

“The day after _mio nipote’s_ birthday,” Greg replied before Ed could unleash a scathing quip or two. The Sergeant cast his team a slightly pleading look. “None of his classmates are interested.”

“Their loss,” Wordy remarked, holding up five tickets, two adults’ and three children’s. “What, they think anything without magic is dull?”

“I don’t know, Wordy. But let’s just say that Lance refuses to pass up a chance to ‘play with laser guns’. His words, not mine.”

“So what’s our tac plan?” Sam inquired, a wry grin on his face. “Go in and wipe out all the other birthday parties there on Saturday?”

“The games are strictly free-for-all, Constable Braddock,” Greg countered. “Every man for himself.”

“Come on, Sarge,” Ed whined, “That’s no fun.” He tossed a wink at his teammates behind his boss’s back.

“In that case, how about everyone against _you_ , Ed?” Jules teased.

“I’d do that,” Spike agreed at once, his dark eyes glittering with anticipation.

Lou grinned, but wisely didn’t put his own two cents in as their team leader gave them a haughty look.

Ed cleared his throat, rapidly changing the subject before his team could tease him any further. “Any warrants today, Sarge?”

“Nothing on tap, but I’ve heard a few rumblings. I’ll see if any of those rumors have any teeth to them,” Parker replied. “Till then, hit the workout room, guys.” As the team rose, Greg pointed at his team leader. “Ed.”

“Yeah?”

The Sergeant waited until the rest of the team was gone to add, “The paperwork you’ve been putting off.”

“Get it done.”

“Today.”

“Copy that, Boss.”

* * * * *

The local Laser Quest was packed full of kids and teenagers eagerly awaiting their turn to play in the building’s two story, dark-light equipped Laser Tag maze. Ed navigated through the crush up to the counter to hand over the tickets; the employee scanned them and asked Ed’s family what they wanted their screen names to be.

Ed rolled his eyes. “What do we need those for?”

“Oh, we display the highest scores for each game,” the employee explained. “Most hits, most accuracy, that sort of thing.” He pointed up to a monitor where the stats for the last game played were showing.

Although Ed still didn’t see the point, he opted for ‘T1 TL’. Clark, grinning like a maniac, chose ‘Music Monster’ and Sophie chose ‘Sniper Mom’. Once the names were put into the system, another employee took them to where the Calvin birthday party was being held. The Lanes were the last to arrive and they arrived to find out that the first of the Laser Tag games was about to begin.

Sophie and Shelley opted to stay behind and watch the party area, joined by two of the three Wordsworth girls – only Claire was old enough to join the fun and she was following her father just as closely as she could get away with to avoid being held back. Ed and Wordy traded grins at her antics as the group trekked into the pre-game area.

The laser tag equipment was handed out and the party was treated to a brief explanation and demo of how the gun and the vest worked.

“Once you’re in the maze, it’ll be about a minute before you can shoot anyone,” the employee explained cheerfully. “Spread out and remember, this game is a free-for-all. If you get shot, you’ll know it. The vest or the gun will light up where you were hit and you won’t be able to fire for a few seconds.” The man paused, considering the eager group. “The game lasts thirty minutes and we’ll tell you when it’s over. Once it’s over, head for the exit sign and we’ll collect the gear. You’ll see your scores out in the lobby. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Okay, here we go, folks.”

* * * * *

Lance smirked as he ducked behind a wall on the second floor and spied his sister through a grate in the floor. Aiming carefully, he fired and hit her shoulder piece. She looked up at him, making a face, and hastily moved away from the grate before her gear reset.

Unfortunately, Lance didn’t have any time to celebrate, because his own gear lit up just then. He whipped around to see Uncle Spike…with Uncle Lou creeping up behind him. Rather than retreating, the teen lifted his weapon; both he and Uncle Lou fired at Uncle Spike at the same time, nailing the bomb tech, then they turned on each other, missing as they used Uncle Spike as a handy barrier. The bomb tech laughed as he scrambled out of the way and returned the favor.

* * * * *

Ed had discovered quite quickly that the laser gun didn’t have even a flicker of the accuracy he was used to. On the _other_ hand, he was _still_ a sniper and that translated into better accuracy than the kids and most of his teammates. He slid around a corner, spying Wordy aiming upwards through a grate. The team leader grinned as he brought his gun up to aim at Wordy’s back.

A ‘gear hit’ alert sounded, but it wasn’t Wordy’s. “What the…?” Ed questioned, twisting around in confusion. Greg smirked at him before retreating as Wordy laughed hysterically at the expression on Ed’s face.

“So much for the sniper,” Wordy teased.

There was only one response to that. Ed waited until his gun stopped blinking, then fired at Wordy’s chest.

* * * * *

Jules found a perch on the second floor and holed up, protecting her perch against all comers. She fended off a concentrated attack from Spike and Lou, who’d temporarily teamed up after she sniped both of them. They came back with Lance and Alanna, the four attempting to overwhelm her with sheer numbers. The attack succeeded in nailing her once, but, in the end, Jules drove them back, clipping all of her attackers at least once and likely twice.

It wasn’t _them_ she was worried about. Oh, no, she was just _waiting_ for either Sam or Ed to try their hands at stealing her perch. They were the most likely to succeed, not that she was going to make it easy for them.

In the end, what Jules hadn’t counted on was her two sniper opposites teaming up with each other to bring her down. They pinned her down in the middle, unable to fire back at them without _one_ of them nailing her gear and disabling her gun. Ironically, Spike and Lou saved her as they attacked Sam from behind and ended up in a three way fight that let Jules focus all her attention on Ed’s position. Before any of them could win their respective fights, the game ended.

* * * * *

“Wow,” Wordy whistled, staring up at their scores. “Who’s Pink Ranger?”

“Me,” Jules replied casually, grinning at her teammates. Even with Sam and Ed pinning her down, she’d still come away with the most ‘kills’, though Ed had her beat on accuracy.

Sam, though, was looking at another one of the scores. “Dang, Sarge beat us all.”

“How’s that?” Spike questioned, following Sam’s gaze.

Sarge smirked. “Lowest number of ‘deaths’ versus ‘kills’,” he explained.

“That settles it,” Ed declared, “You do the tac plans, Greg.”

“No thanks, Ed. I’ll stick with negotiating.”

“No, no, no,” Wordy broke in. “The _laser tag_ tac plans, Sarge.”

“All our games are free-for-alls, Wordy,” Sarge pointed out.

“Come on, Boss, we can do _one_ game that’s party versus party,” Ed cajoled.

At the hopeful looks he got, the Sergeant sighed and shook his head. “I’ll ask.”

* * * * *

The management was quite agreeable; apparently another party had booked a team game, only to have the other party fall through. The Calvin party would have to wait an hour for their next game, but the group agreed that they could wait. In the meantime, Lance opened his presents and they feasted on pizza as well as the teenager’s impressive birthday cake – baked to look like a castle that was a cross between ancient and modern, complete with a moat and a winged lion statue on the far side of said moat. Ed suspected the cake was part magic – how else was it holding up, even with several pieces cut out of it?

As the wait stretched on, the kids wandered out to the lobby and tried their hand at the old-style arcade games available. None of them were all that good at the games and they soon surrendered their places to watch as Ed and Sam went head-to-head in the cowboy shooting game.

* * * * *

The two snipers were still squabbling about who had won as they slipped into their laser tag vests and checked their guns. The four kids rolled their eyes at each other as the other team looked gleeful about facing off with a team that was already fighting with each other.

The argument stopped at the precise moment Team One was out of sight; Ed and Sam traded wicked grins while their Sergeant shook his head at them. Jules led the way straight to where she’d laired up in the first game and Sarge directed his three snipers to the soft spots of their location before stationing the kids at the rear entrance with Lou to back them up. Wordy and Spike were split up to handle the ramp and an entrance that connected with the other part of the second floor. Parker kept himself as more of a free-range fighter to back up any area that was overly threatened.

The result, to put it bluntly, was a virtual bloodbath. The snipers fended off most of the other party’s attacks and the few attacks that made it through were forced to contend with the enthusiastic teens and one pre-teen as well as an experienced group of SRU constables. None of the entrances ever came close to being ‘breached’ as the contest continued.

When the ending buzzer sounded, Team One strolled towards the exit as Parker, Lane, and Wordsworth warned their children against gloating. The other party sported unhappy looks as their opponents passed their equipment in. The father of the other boy having his birthday party looked particularly upset with the results.

“Why’d you pit us against a group of professionals?” he complained loudly to the young woman behind the counter.

“Sir, they’re another party,” the woman replied meekly. “They asked if they could switch their second game to a team game and your party needed an opposing team.”

“We have a problem?” Ed demanded, stepping up. Off-duty or not, it went against the grain to let the young employee get verbally abused without his intervention.

“Yeah, I’ve got a problem. I’ve got a problem with my _son_ getting trounced by a group of professional laser tag players.”

“We’re not,” Sam protested. “I think the last time I played laser tag was a weekend off in basic.”

Spike and Lou traded looks. “We’ve played a couple times,” Spike admitted.

“Nothing serious,” Lou finished.

“A _likely_ story,” the blustering man snapped as his wife tried to pull him away. “I _demand_ a refund!”

“Sir, I’m very sorry, but I can’t give you a refund for a game you’ve played.”

“I expected to play against another group of partygoers, not _professionals_ ,” the angry father shouted. “You either refund my money or give my son another game!”

The woman looked as if she wanted to be anywhere but in front of the furious man, but held her ground. “I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t do that.”

The father might have pushed the issue even further, but Ed gifted him with his best cop stare and Wordy shifted into position to physically intervene if need be. The man’s wife finally succeeded in dragging her husband away from the confrontation. The harassed employee gave Team One a look of thanks, then passed out their score sheets from the game.

Ed drifted back to a guilty-looking Parker. “Greg, don’t beat yourself up. It’s a _game_ , no matter how loud that guy was yelling. Besides, we talked you into it and we can’t exactly stop being cops.”

The team leader received an amused look. “No, we can’t,” Greg agreed. “Still, it wasn’t exactly fair for me to volunteer for a team game when I knew we’d dominate.”

A snort. “Greg, for all you knew, we’d be up against a group of military guys with weekend passes. Stop it. The kids had a blast and I bet that kid will be back to cheerful and happy in no time.”

“You just want to do this again sometime,” Greg accused, though his eyes and voice had lightened up a bit.

“Darn right I do,” Ed confirmed with a grin. “I need to come back and beat Sam in that cowboy game again.”

“Get out,” Sam retorted. “You _lost_.”

“In your dreams, blondie.”

As the two snipers descended into squabbling again, Spike and Lou traded resigned looks. “Here we go again,” Spike groaned.

“You think they’ll notice if we leave?” Lou whispered.

“Eventually,” Jules whispered back.

The team snuck away, leaving the snipers arguing behind them. When Sophie finally returned to the lobby to retrieve her husband so they could go home, he and Sam were duking it out in their sixth game of the night.

_~ Fin_

**Author's Note:**

> Happy 4th of July (2020) all! Alas, I doubt many Laser Tag arenas are open right now, but I do hope you enjoyed Team One's mini-adventure. This is a oneshot from Season One that I've been hanging onto for awhile and I figured this was a good time to let it out to romp.
> 
> Have a great weekend and Happy Birthday, America!


End file.
